The mafia hit man, the moll and Mississippi Burning
IT was like a classic episode of Perry Mason, with an FBI agent charged with murder, a mouthy mob moll and a twist at the end: The FBI guy walked after a reporter with a secret tape exposed the gangster’s girlfriend as a liar who couldn’t keep her story straight.
In a stunning finish to one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in US history, former FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio was cleared of giving up confidential information that a Colombo family hit man used to kill four fellow mobsters.
DeVecchio was cheered by his ex-colleagues before triumphantly leaving a Brooklyn courtroom, finally cleared after spending 13 years under suspicion for his long and bizarre relationship with mob killer/mob informer Gregory Scarpa Sr.
“After almost two years, this nightmare is over,” said DeVecchio, referring to the time since his indictment. “I’ll never forgive the Brooklyn DA’s office for irresponsibly pursuing this case. My question is: ‘Where do I go to get back my reputation?”’
Prosecutors gambled by building their case on the shaky testimony of Linda Schiro, a mob mistress since she met Scarpa at age 16. Their hopes imploded when two reporters surfaced with decade-old interviews — captured on tape — that left her credibility full of more holes than any murdered mafioso.
Schiro, in addition to implicating DeVecchio, supplied some of the trial’s more strange testimony. She described a scenario where Scarpa reportedly assisted the FBI in finding the bodies of slain civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.
It supposedly happened during the search for the civil rights who were beaten and shot by a gang of Klansmen and buried in an earthen dam near Mississippi. The case was famously dramatised in the movie Mississippi Burning.
Investigators struggled for answers in the early days of the case, stymied by stonewalling Klan members.
In 1994, the New York Daily News, citing unidentified federal law enforcement officials, reported that a frustrated J. Edgar Hoover turned to Scarpa to extract information.
The Daily News said the New York mobster terrorised an appliance salesman and Klansman already under suspicion in the case and got him to reveal the location of the bodies.
Schiro testified that she and Scarpa travelled to Mississippi in 1964 after he was recruited by the FBI.
She said they walked into the hotel where the FBI had gathered during the investigation, and the gangster winked at a group of agents. She said an agent later showed up in their room and handed Scarpa a gun.
She said Scarpa helped find the volunteers’ bodies by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.” She said an unidentified agent later returned to the room, gave Scarpa a wad of cash, and took back the weapon.
The killings galvanised the struggle for equality in the American South and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Seven people were convicted at the time, but none served more than six years.
Mississippi later reopened the case, winning a manslaughter conviction against former Klansman and part-time preacher Edgar Ray Killen two years ago. He is serving a 60-year prison sentence.
But former FBI agent Jay Cochran, who was involved in digging up the trio’s bodies from an earthen dam, later said: “I’ve never heard that one before. I don’t think that has any merit to it.”
In fact, Scarpa is credited in various publications with helping to solve different civil rights killings. In each case, Scarpa supposedly shoved a gun into a man’s mouth to get him to reveal the critical information.
The scenario may apply to the 1967 killing of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg case in which Scarpa and an FBI agent reportedly bought a television from Klansman Lawrence Byrd just as he was closing his Laurel business. Byrd helped carry the TV to the car, and Scarpa shoved him into the back seat, where Byrd was pistol-whipped.
It is unquestioned Byrd was severely beaten and also unquestioned that he signed a 22-page statement to the FBI in which he confessed and implicated others.
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